novelraw Chapter 92: The Calm Between Strikes
Chapter 92: The Calm Between Strikes
Aldric was standing beside his throne when Bravar came in.
He had been looking at the things on the walls, maps mostly, the territory of Valdenmoor and the regions around it, the borders marked in faded ink that had been updated several times over the years as things changed.
He did this sometimes when he was thinking. Standing helped. Sitting made him feel like he was waiting for something, and he was past waiting.
Bravar bowed at the door and came forward.
"Nothing?" Aldric said, before Bravar could speak. He had read it in the man’s posture before he opened his mouth.
"Nothing, m’lord," Bravar confirmed. "The night passed without incident. Every knight not on day duty was awake throughout. No deaths and no signs of anything entering the barracks."
Aldric looked at the map nearest to him and asked:
"So the attacker didn’t come last night."
"Apparently not."
"Does that surprise you?"
Bravar considered it. "Not entirely. The pattern we’ve observed suggests the attacks don’t follow a daily schedule. The first incident, roughly a week before the second. The second to the third was shorter, perhaps two days. There’s no consistent interval."
"So they take breaks," Aldric said.
"Or they operate on a timeline we haven’t identified yet."
Aldric scratched his beard. "Tell the off-duty men to sleep today. Tonight we repeat, everyone awake, lights on, full watch."
Bravar bowed and left.
That night was the same as the previous one.
Cards, beer, conversations that engulfed their attention.
Men telling stories they had told before to men who had heard them before, because the stories passed time and passing time was the mission.
The candles burned. The lamps burned. The barracks sat full of awake men waiting for something that didn’t arrive.
By the time morning came, they had stopped feeling relieved about it. The relief of the first nothing-happened morning had been genuine.
They were actually glad that the plague of unknown illness that usually happened didn’t.
No one died.
But this second one felt different. Like waiting for weather that everyone knew was coming and just hadn’t decided when.
The next morning Aldric assembled them all.
He sat this time, which meant the meeting was formal rather than reactive. His three advisors at the table. Bravar and Ostric standing.
"Two nights," Aldric said. "And nothing."
No one said anything.
"We continue regardless," Aldric said. "Every night, full wakefulness, until we catch whatever is doing this or until we have reason to believe it’s stopped."
One of the advisors, Fenwick, raised a cautious hand. "Is it possible that the threat has passed? That whatever was responsible has withdrawn for reasons of its own? Or does this mean there is no attacker at all, just some weird illness?"
Everyone looked at him.
"No," Bravar said flatly.
"Four hundred and ninety-one knights," Aldric said. "Something killed four hundred and ninety-one of my knights. It didn’t do that and then simply stop out of generosity." He looked at Fenwick. "And I don’t believe it’s an illness.."
"We continue," Aldric said. "The knights continue staying up all night for whenever it takes."
——
Meanwhile, in Percvale, things had been moving at the pace of a place that had found its rhythm.
Seren spent most of each day with the archers now. The ten who had made it through the initial selection had settled into something resembling a group, which meant they argued occasionally and competed with each other constantly and were getting noticeably better at both.
Seren had stopped correcting basic grip mistakes because basic grip was no longer the issue.
She had moved on to consistency under pressure, shooting while tired, shooting from different positions, shooting while someone stood beside them and talked, which was apparently her method for simulating the distraction of an actual situation.
The animals on the farmland were doing well.
The goats lived their new life, same for the cattle who were calm and eating and growing heavier on the grass that the knights cut from the bush and hauled over daily.
The farmland itself had begun to show something.
Small things, visible only if you looked closely, the first green pushing through the dark restored soil, thin and tentative but obviously real.
Seeds becoming something. Darion had walked out to look at it a day ago and had crouched beside one of the rows and stayed there longer than he intended, looking at the small shoots coming up out of ground that had been dead for years.
The hunting parties went out regularly, led on rotation by Garren and two of the senior knights. They were tactical and quiet, taking no unnecessary risks.
They had internalized the lessons of the early hunts: elevated positions, clear planning, no one sent into uncertain ground without knowing what was uncertain about it.
The meat came back consistently. It sold at the market for prices that most of Percvale’s citizens could manage, and the coin came back to the castle in small but accumulating amounts.
No casualties.
Darion had spent those three days doing almost nothing.
He had been running on three hours of sleep for too long. The infiltration rides alone were several hours each, and arriving back at Percvale in the early morning and trying to function through the day had started showing in ways he couldn’t ignore.
He decided to take a break. Just few days off before another infiltration.
And so he slept. He ate what Maret put in front of him. He walked around the castle and watched the archers train and watched the knights spar and sat in the courtyard in the afternoon light doing nothing in particular.
He talked to Garren about barony matters, like his progress on the infiltration.
The conversation with Garren over the infiltration progress had happened over a late evening meal when the castle was quiet.
Darion had explained the numbers. First infiltration, fifty-one dead. Second, a hundred and twenty. Third, the most recent, close to three hundred, by his estimate, though he acknowledged he had no way to confirm that figure exactly.
Garren had listened to each number in sequence without interruption. When Darion finished, he was quiet for a moment.
"Nearly five hundred," Garren said.
"Across three nights," Darion said.
Garren looked at his cup. "Valdenmoor fields over three thousand knights. Five hundred is significant but not crippling on its own."
"I know. That’s why I’m going back."
"If you keep the pace, maintain the rate of the third night, or close to it, and continue for the remaining days of the deadline window..." Garren ran the number quietly "...you’re looking at a force that’s lost somewhere between a quarter and a third of its total strength. To something invisible. With no explanation and no way to stop it."
"That changes the calculation on marching to collect a debt," Darion said.
"Significantly," Garren agreed. "A king with four thousand knights willing to march on a neighboring barony over fourteen thousand gold is a very different proposition from a king with three thousand knights who are watching their barracks empty out at night without understanding why." He paused.
"At some point the farmland stops being the priority. Stopping whatever is killing his men becomes the priority."
"That’s what I’m counting on."
Garren nodded slowly. "It’s good progress, m’lord" he said. "Real progress."
Then... he had little conversations with Seren, mainly about how the archery’s been going.
He had not filled the five remaining slots in his knight undead inventory...
He had not even thought about Valdenmoor for three days, or had thought about it only in the way you thought about something you had set down and knew you would pick back up, present at the edge of awareness but not demanding anything yet.
Tomorrow he would ride out again...
He would ride out to Valdenmoor for another infiltration.